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;JP;ZATNI ARBI; ANPAc..r.. IT-Japan-phone JP/17/ZATNI Japan joining Korea in driving CDMA2000 (2x20 pts)

Zatni Arbi Columnist Tokyo zatni@cbn.net.id

"No wonder your voice is crystal-clear," my brother said when I told him I was calling from Tokyo. No wonder, indeed. Each time we talk to someone in Singapore, Japan, the U.S. and any other countries with advanced telecommunication infrastructure, it is easier to believe that he is just next door.

That is not always the case, though, as even calls from the same house using two different phone lines may still be plagued by a lot of crackling and popping noises and muffled voice. The fact is that the two telephones will still have to connect via a switch. It means that the conversation has to go through the local infrastructure, which is obviously does not offer the best possible quality of service.

However, my brother became even more impressed when I told him I was talking to him using an a u (pronounced `ey yu') cell phone provided by KDDI, currently the fastest growing telecom operator in Japan.

Qualcomm, the company whose technology is used by KDDI, invited groups of IT journalists from Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam to see how CDMA is being used in Japan to offer new and more sophisticated mobile services besides simple voice communication. My IT journalist colleagues and I were allowed to call anybody anywhere in Indonesia -- or anywhere in the world through KDDI direct dialing service -- as necessary. All we had to do was to punch 001 010, followed by the country code number and the mobile or fixed line number that we wanted to reach.

Not surprisingly, everyone seemed to be continuously talking to family members, relatives and friends in Jakarta, Ho Ci Minh City, Taipei and God knows where else. We were continuously testing the network by making calls from inside our coach, from Tokyo's famous underground stations and from the restaurant on top of the New Otani Tower Hotel, and we never experienced any problem at all.

The reliability and availability of the network were, to put it mildly, very impressive. The only time I failed to reach my wife's phone number was when she was on her way to Glodok, and it was because Telkomsel's - and not KDDI's -- network was busy.

* A cell phone heaven

Those with some interest in mobile telecommunication will certainly be familiar with the fact that Japan is one of the countries with the highest mobile phone penetration. At the end of last June, the number of the country's cellular subscribers was around 77 million, or 60 percent of their total population.

Three major operators serve Japan's 127 million population. These are Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), KDDI, and J-Phone (which has been acquired by Vodaphone). Established in 1952, NTT has been serving the country for the longest time. It is not surprising that the company is serving the largest number of subscribers, i.e., 44 million as of June 2003. KDDI comes second with a total of 14.7 million subscribers and J-Phone has 14.4 millions.

Today, only three types of cellular technologies are in use in Japan. The majority of phone lines were still using the Personal Digital Communication (PDC) the CDMA2000 and the W-CDMA. PDC is offered by all the three operators, while CDMA2000 is offered only by KDDI and W-CDMA is provided by both NTT DoCoMo and J- Phone.

As of December 2002, 60 million (82 percent) of cellular subscribers are using PDC, 13 million were using CDMA2000 and 153,000 (0.2 percent) were using W-CDMA. One thing to keep in mind here is that W-CDMA, unfortunately, stands for Wideband CDMA and is the third generation of the GSM technology and has little to do with Qualcomm-developed CDMA technology.

Interestingly, however, the number of CDMA2000 1x had jumped to 8.6 million by the end of last June, while the number of W- CDMA subscribers -- according to data provided by Telecommunication Carrier Association -- was 590,000 (535,000 were subscribers of NTT DoCoMo's FOMA and 55,000 were subscribers of J-Phone's UMTS).

What this tells us is that the acceptance rate of CDMA2000 1x as the next generation of mobile telephone far exceeded that of W-CDMA (both FOMA and UMTS). According to company data, the number of CDMA2000 1x subscribers reached eight million on May 29 this year, while the number of W-CDMA did not grow much. This is naturally very encouraging news to KDDI -- and Qualcomm, but not so for the GSM-based W-CDMA front as Japan was actually considered the breeding ground for this GSM technology.

There seem to be a number of reasons for the strong pickup of CDMA2000 1x. First, according to Qualcomm's officials, upgrading the infrastructure from cdmaOne-which is considered to represent the second generation (2G) of the CDMA technology to the next levels, which include high-speed data capability, does not require as much investment as what it would take GSM operators to migrate to W-CDMA.

Secondly, in the case of Japan, the inability of the W-CDMA subscribers to roam nationwide still leaves them hesitant in changing their handsets from 2G to 3G, which prevents them from taking advantage of the W-CDMA capabilities. There are other reasons for the slower growth of W-CDMA, including the inability of the parties involved in coming up more quickly with standard specifications.

Meanwhile, the Japanese market has been obviously embracing mobile data communication more than ever before. In the last three years alone, for example, there has been a five-fold growth in the number of Mobile Internet Subscribers, from less than 13 million to almost 65 million. An upcoming version of CDMA2000 1x, known as CDMA2000 1xEVDO, promises very good data handling capability, and this makes it a good choice for mobile Internet services. The main strength of the CDMA2000 1xEVDO lies in the fact that, from the ground up, it was designed for the IP (Internet Protocol) network rather than the voice network.

I also had the chance to visit one of the biggest stores in Shinjuku, where I saw a breathtaking array of cell phones. As you would have guessed, most of the newer models already came with the cameras, which means that demand for video mail and other multimedia transmission capability is set to explode.

Even Casio-made cell phones that we were using during our stay in Tokyo had the capability of capturing up to 15 seconds of video. Sending the video clips will certainly require an infrastructure optimized for this type of data. This gives KDDI- and Qualcomm-reasons to be very optimistic about their future in Japan-and the rest of Asia.

Another driving factor for the growth in mobile data services is certainly the content industry. KDDI has been working together with thousands of content providers in Japan. Their subscribers have been downloading Chaku Uta, or the music ringer tones like crazy. Next week we will take a look at two of very useful applications-location based services and security-offered by KDDI's partners. Content providing and application services are two areas that we have to look into intensely, as they provide a lot of new business opportunities.